


go forth and multiply

by Anonymous



Category: Homestuck
Genre: 5+1 fic but it's 6+1 instead, Animal Death, Earth C, Gen, Godstuck, Not Epilogues Compliant, because i'm stupid and can't count
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:27:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27067111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Carcinisation: one of nature's many attempts to evolve a crab.Or one ofsomething's attempts to evolve a crab.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 35
Collections: Anonymous, Unofficial FFA Anon Collection





	go forth and multiply

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written on FFA, for the prompt "100 words of carcinisation".

1.  
  
The first attempt doesn't look like much of anything, a child's drawing of a crab done from memory and forced into living form. It has the chitin, at least, in some form; there are claws, though the pincers are oddly aligned and have three parts instead of two, and the eyes sit too far at the sides of the head rather than forward or on stalks, a mark of clumsy less-than-intelligent design. Their soft blue shells split too easily under the water pressure after the first few thousand feet, so they linger by the shore, where coastal wingbeasts devour the species to extinction within the third perigee. The wingbeasts are adapted; the almost-crab is not.  
  
  
2.  
  
The second attempt is closer, sturdier, but it takes advantage of this to settle the depths. Too many subspecies wander off where he can't follow, and they turn long-legged and eyeless and alien in the twilight. He sits in the sand and watches the remainder bitterly. The predators are shellbeasts this time, swimming ashore and crawling in droves from their nests of eggs in the sand. His creations' survival instincts are poor (much like his own, he thinks), and they are eaten into extinction again by the end of the sweep.  
  
  
3.  
  
The third attempt is meant to live on land. He tries for something closer to his lusus's design, this time, but something is wrong: the carapace threatens to collapse on itself at even a quarter of the intended size, and the spiracles are inefficient. He scraps the designs and starts from scratch in a fit of pique, which has nothing to do with the latest clutch of hatchlings that suffocated themselves during their second molt, or the pleading eyes of the ones he couldn't save.  
  
  
4.  
  
The fourth attempt produces spiders. They're awful and venomous and their many eyes taunt him. He almost considers sticking with them, just to see if his luck will turn, but it's too late. They've abandoned the sea and the ground in favor of trees and silk, and he decides, after smashing one into the ground after it bites him on the finger like the upstart little bitch of a mortal it is, that these ones can fend for themselves.  
  
Someone else will like them more, anyway.  
  
  
5.  
  
The fifth is the closest yet. They have the eyes in the right place, the chitinous plates in that washed-out pale color like a lusus, the two-clawed pincers, the spikes. The number of legs is still wrong, and the eyes are oddly colored (a mutation -- he almost laughs), but they're so close. He treasures them and protects them, and guards the colony for the better part of a sweep until he's a virtual recluse, only emerging for the benefits of civilization and to update his film collection. He tries, so hard, but the universe clearly can't let him be happy.  
  
The winter is cold and long. Food is scarcer than it should be, but it's the temperature that does them in. He tries to shelter them in his makeshift hive on the beach, holding their tiny chilly bodies against his own skin under his sweater, but it's not enough. His dead creations litter the beach by spring, and the survivors are picked off quickly by beasts emerging from the lean season into an unending hunger. The last one dies in his arms of causes he never figures out, with no offspring to speak of, a perigee after the last corpses of its kin have been washed away by the tide.  
  
He spends half the night swearing into the sky before he runs out of breath and starts crying instead. He knows perfectly well how great he is at leading innocent species to their deaths. The universe really doesn't need to rub it in.  
  
  
6.  
  
It isn't try number six that succeeds. That attempt produces spiders again, because the universe hates him.  
  
He almost stops counting, but it's at least into the double digits. Closing in on triple. And the details aren't quite right, because they never are; the eyes are on stubby stalks, and the chitin is shiny and black, but they _live_ , and they _endure_ , generation after barely-believable generation, until he doesn't realize how long he's been holding his breath, only that he's finally breathing again.  
  
  
(+1)  
  
Crabs and pseudo-crabs are the largest family in kingdom Animalia on Earth C, with nearly two million species recorded by the modern era. Only the gods know why this is, and they are laughing.


End file.
